The technology has advanced dramatically, but the underlying philosophy remains the same: that there is something profoundly enlightening about seeing these patterns of life and death laid out in cartographic form. The bird's-eye view remains as essential as ti was back in 1854. When the next great epidemic does come, maps will be as crucial as vaccines in our fight agains the disease. But again, the scale of the observation will have broadened considerably: from a neighborhood to an entire planet.

The ghost map [219/299]

(Steven Johnson, 2006, Penguin Books)

It marks a turning point in the battle between urban man and Vibrio cholerae, because for the first time a public institution had made an informed intervention into a cholera outbreak based on a scientifically sound theory of the disease. The decision to remove the handle was not based on meteorological charts or social prejudice or watered-down medieval humorology; it was based on a methodological survey of the actual social patterns of the epidemic, confirming predictions put forward by an underlying theory of the disease's effect on the human body. It was based on information that the city's own organization had made visible. For the first time, the V. cholerae's growing dominion over the city would be challenged by reason, not superstition.

The ghost map [162-163/299]

(Steven Johnson, 2006, Penguin Books)